Ron Paul: Yellen is ‘worse than average’

Former Republican presidential candidate, Representative Ron Paul (R-Tx), greets convention goers as he walks the floor before the start of the second session of the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, August 28, 2012. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS ELECTIONS) - RTR377A9

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Ron Paul is not a fan of Janet Yellen, the newly confirmed Chair of the Federal Reserve, but he told The Daily Caller Monday she is nowhere near as flawed as the system she is about to take over.

“It was never the chairman himself, herself that’s the problem,” Paul said. “It’s the whole system.”

Paul has been criticizing the central bank for years, calling both for an audit of the Fed and for its total abolition. Paul a long-serving Republican member of Congress and 1988 presidential candidate on the Libertarian Party ticket, is a proponent of Austrian Economics, which focuses on the relativity of value and the impossibility of centrally planning a complex and dynamic economy.

“I put a lot of blame on the problems that we have, the booms and the busts and the unemployment and this recession that we can’t get out of –– it’s all due to the monetary system,” Paul said, saying they were “living in this dream world” to assume that one body could set interest rates. “And the head of the Federal Reserve just is the symbolic head of a deeply flawed system that should’ve never been created.”

“I think they’re living a pipe dream and it’s going to soon be very apparent what terrible shape our economy is in,” he said.

Yellen will hasten that revelation, Paul said, explaining that the reason he sees her as “a little bit worse than average” is “because she is probably going to be more excessive in creating money.”

“But what can she do?” Paul said. “They’ve taken the interest rates down to zero, the only tool they have is printing money, creating money out of thin air, so there’s nothing left. And she believes in even doing more of it.”

Paul’s son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, has in some ways taken up his father’s mantle in congress. The younger Paul introduced the ‘Audit the Fed’ bill in the Senate and pushed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to bring it to the floor, promising to delay Yellen’s confirmation vote if he did not acquiesce. Reid refused.

The elder Paul said bringing that bill to the floor would “be the first step in the right direction that they’re serious about finding out what’s happening,” but he was emphatically pessimistic about its prospects.

“They’ll never allow that to happen. I mean I had it pass twice in the House, but even if the Senate passed it due to public pressure … the president would veto it,” he said. “So it’s not going to happen.”

There is no chance whatsoever that congress will dig itself out of this hole, Paul said.